My Friend, The Cat

When Phil Geoffrey Bond’s beloved cat, Chesterson, became ill early in the Spring of 2006, he took his grief to the page. Over the course of the feline’s several-week illness, which ultimately resulted in an unfortunate ending, Bond wrote not only of his cat’s struggle against disease, but moreso of their entire history together. From chasing cockroaches in their first apartment, “a crappy East Village monstrosity with sloping floors,” where, during hot summers, Bond would place the feline in the refrigerator to cool off, to wintertime roadtrips where he learned that cats can indeed drive a station wagon, Bond’s story unfolds year by year.

The result of this ten year relationship between man and cat is My Friend, The Cat, a funny and stirring new theatre piece. A hybrid between cabaret and traditional theatre, the piece includes music by composers as diverse as Laura Nyro, Charlie Chaplin, John Bucchino and even Andrew Lloyd Webber (guess which musical) featuring an array of brilliant, celebrated vocalists.